Day 7 – Cannes

Well, we are Americans. And, in the immortal words of our President, “Yes, we Cannes!”

It’s a good thing you can’t actually throw things at me over the internet.

So, we had no excursion planned for Cannes, which meant we could sleep in a bit and take the morning slowly. Which we successfully did. Go us!

Over in Cannes itself, we didn’t do a lot. We did hop on a little tour train that was picking up at the pier. It ended up being an hour ride. We went down the beach, listening to the recorded message talk about famous hotels, and the famous people that stayed there. We turned around, and came back down the beach, hearing about the famous hotels we’d missed the first time, and more famous people. We turned up a road into the fashion district, which of course brought up some famous people. Seriously, is Cannes actually known for anything other than attracting famous people? Then, we wound our way up the hill (listening to the engine of the train straining) to a medieval church on the summit. There was a fantastic view, and we got ten minutes to get out and take pictures. There was, oddly enough, no mention of famous people all the way at the top.

When we left the church, we noticed that the three ladies who had been sitting in front of us didn’t get back on. I hope that was their plan. We hadn’t been warned that it was an “at your own risk” tour!

Anyway, we got back to the pier safely. We then wandered up through a small collection of vendors that had set up a kind of Christmas village on the sidewalk. (I got myself a nice new watch.) We came back through a sort of flea market area, which is apparently out there every Saturday. (Was it Saturday? I’d forgotten.) Of course, with all the famous people around (not that we actually saw any), even flea market prices were pretty high. But, we saw some neat stuff.

This was our only tendered port of the trip (meaning we got to and from the pier by using shuttlecraft, er, I mean launches, instead of a gangplank). Of course, it was also the day with the choppiest seas. Which meant the tiny ship was tossed. In another set of immortal words, “CAAAAAAANNES!”

Also in the ship back, we overheard part of a very strange conversation. One of the other passengers was mentioning that Cannes was the first place they’d been to this trip that actually felt like the Mediterranean. All of Italy felt different somehow. More like other places they’d been. Like…. Guatemala.

Can I get a “le sigh?”

The afternoon was all about relaxation. Which, yes, meant naps. It also involved taking a lot of pictures from our room balcony of windsurfers playing on the water, and the beautiful coast of France. Sonya took around 20 pictures in town, but 50 from our balcony. It really was beautiful.

Oh, I also learned that, if I’m ever in Cannes again, I’d like to take an excursion out the little islands just off the coast. They have medieval castles out there, and the rest of the property is all state-protected forests. One of the castles was the model for the prison in Man in the Iron Mask. That sounds like it could be an awesome tour. We got a few pictures of those castles as we pulled out of port.

That night we went to the steakhouse on board. It was tasty, even if they did get my order almost totally wrong. Le sigh. Still, it was a good way to wrap up the trip.

Then, it was back to the room for the ever-exciting packing. I think we didn’t actually do to badly at that. Also, we discovered that we really did keep the shopping to a very reasonable minimum this trip, and did not need to break out the extra bag we’d packed.

This entry was posted on 30. November 2009 at 10:41 and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.